Sunday, September 13, 2009

Unit tests and the Layers Pattern (part 4)

Last time we looked at the layers in OPC UA module into a little bit more details. Now lets look at how the tests were structured. I was not please at how the diagram represented the organisation of the tests so here is a modified version:

Horizontal (single layer)

Test of classes in the logical layer

Most are classical Junit tests. Mostly, they test class methods in an isolated manner. I do have “behavior driven” tests here that use a mock implementation of the lower layers. Because of the layered approach, the Mock implementation is quite simple. It uses a Map in the background with backdoor methods to setup parameter values. The methods that fake UA method calls don't do anything except changed predefined parameter values.

Test of classes in the low-level layer

Same thing here except that I use Nunit since this is written in C#. The difference is that I don't have lower levels in my code. The next layer is external and that is the OPC UA framework. I was able to expand my tests here using generics and conditional compilation. I had to do this because the OPC UA framework does not use a lot of interface or abstraction. I ended up having to work very hard to test some part of the code. A lot of the tests here are for the special Queue used for subscriptions.

Vertical (multiple layers)

Tests of the JNI interface

Here I use a separate DLL that does not use the C++/CLI layer. This allows me to test the JNI part of the code in isolation so that if I have a bug I know that the problem is in the pure native C++ layer. I could have used horizontal tests here but they would have been very limited since most of the code is mostly JNI mechanics.

Tests of all upper layers

These tests go from the logical down to the low-level layer. The low-level layer however is Mocked so this group of tests is mainly a test of the C++/CLI mechanic. Of course there is a small amount of redundant tests of the JNI code here. This is unavoidable. However, because the JNI code is tested in isolation elsewhere this is not a problem. I know that if I have a bug here there is a high probability that the bug is in the C++/CLI mechanic.

Conclusion

Structuring the code in layers allows to more easily test more code. Having different group of tests allows to quickly find the source of a bug. You avoid much debugging using this modular approach. You also can tests more stuff as part of the build because you can use Mock implementations of key components and avoid having to use an actual OPC UA server on the build machine. The code is tested with an actual OPC UA server as part of manual tests. These are JUnit tests that I run manually on my development machine and that use all real layers. Finally, system and integration tests close the loop.

About Me

I use to spend a lot of my time playing guitar. These days my fingers do a lot more on the computer keyboard than on my guitar.
I also like to read a lot. All kinds of books. Programming, Science, Philosophy, Economy, ...